Damned Tree
by sazza-da-vampire
Summary: Family Matters. Thranduil is reputed to be unreasonable, unpredictable, and irrational. When his seven-year-old daughter refuses to come down from a tree during a family outing, Thranduil finds himself in an embarrassing situation as a result of his typically atypical handling of the situation.


Disclaimer: I own nothing recognisable.

Damned Tree

Thranduil glared up at the damned tree. If there was one tree he didn't like, it was this one. Thousands of years ago, when the tree was relatively young, the then-Prince had fallen like a toddler from this tree, resulting in painful wounds – both to his pride and his body.

He would be damned if that tree would get away with dumping him again!

As the King brooded, sitting in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the great cedar, his family and closest friends all laughing around him, he wondered whether making a new throne from the tree's trunk would only be setting himself up for more embarrassing falls in the future. It would be satisfying to carve the tree up, though. Just this tree, though. Thranduil bore no ill will to any other tree in his domain – rather, he was fiercely protective of the trees upon which his realm was built.

Twice, now, this tree had dumped him on the ground, to choruses of laughter from Silvan Elves – this time, to be fair, those Silvan Elves were friends and family, not complete strangers, but the embarrassment he'd felt from falling out of a tree four thousand years earlier was not lessened today.

Aldariel, giggling, curled up to sit beside her gloomy husband, reaching across to place a light hand on his knee. "No broken bones this time?" she asked cheekily, and then and there Thranduil very nearly got up and walked away – from her, from the traitorous tree, the children taking the piss out of him, and his whole damned kingdom – until Aldariel shifted, slotting herself into Thranduil's lap and resting her head on his shoulder. The oh-so-intoxicating scent of her perfume permeated the air right under the King's nose, and as he took a deep breath, memories of other perfumes flooded through his mind – all the perfumes Aldariel had favoured over the millennia, and his reaction each time she found a new one, and Thranduil decided that one tree with a vendetta against him wasn't so bad, really, not when he had such a loving Queen and such a large, loving (and infuriating) family.

An hour earlier, Thranduil had been enjoying a pleasant afternoon off, with all the children of the realm at this time, and their families.

Queen Aldariel, her bodyguard Sílívren, and Sílívren's husband Malthon were perhaps the closest to Thranduil, with the exception of his own bodyguard and millennia-long best friend, Lothellon. Lothellon's wife, Ladlaurë, and his sister, Lothelleth, laughed as they recounted an incident where Lothellon saved Thranduil from a flying bowl of spaghetti, back when Elrond's twin sons were youths. Lothellon's husband Neldororn was chattering with the Crown Prince Bragolaglor, seeming for all the world like a pair of adolescents, not two highly trained and very deadly warriors.

Nímloth, Thranduil's eldest daughter and the Crown Princess, was animatedly discussing her daughter's achievements with Aglarmoth and his wife Tuilë, and both warriors were utterly at ease and relaxed as they cooed over their own daughter, Lauruial.

Tingallos, Gilduriel, Celebglín and Sílmariel were officially supervising the children, but their attention was mostly upon Sílmariel's distended abdomen, where her unborn child was kicking, and the adults were joyfully feeling the movements.

The older children (Nímloth, of course, counted as an adult, and her own children were running about the clearing) were playing a variant of tag, where one adolescent wore a blindfold and tried to catch his friends by listening for them. Legolas caught Brethildíl when she stumbled over little Encalion, causing the toddler to fall and cry.

Tingallos and Gilduriel immediately rushed to pick up their precious child, and after checking he was unharmed they set him to playing again with the other little children. The twins Gilloth and Melloth were six years old, and it was unusual to find them separated from their beloved aunt and best friend, seven-year-old Lothlomë.

Lothlomë, though, was being uncooperative. She had climbed the cedar, and had no plans of coming back down any time soon.

As Aldanna accepted the blindfold from Brethildíl, and the adolescents' game continued, the heavily pregnant Sílmariel leaned into her husband's arms, trusting Celebglín to support her as her baby kicked her fiercely from within, resulting in pained whimpers from the soon-to-be mother. "He's shaping up to be fierce already," Sílmariel wheezed once she caught her breath, "We might have another Lothlomë on our hands if we're not careful."

Five-year-old Lauruial begged her best friend to come down to play, but Lothlomë refused, sticking her tongue out and climbing higher.

Aldanna and Brethildíl, bored of their game which had mutated into a brawl between the three ellyn, volunteered to climb up after the little princess. Aldanna shot up the tree like a squirrel, Brethildíl following closely. Lothlomë still would not come down, even when Lothelleth promised her lunch if she came down right now. Aldanna and Brethildíl, at the mention of lunch, dropped from the tree so fast that one might think they had fallen, and the girls were at the table (thoughtfully provided by Lothelleth) barely a second after Legolas, Tathar and Brethilríl.

The adolescents were in the middle of their largest growth spurts, and were in their first few years of training – all of them wanted to be warriors, even more so after they learned what it meant to have the dragon, Smaug, in the neighbouring Kingdom which had been destroyed two years before Lothlomë's birth.

Lunch was a pleasant meal, out in the sunshine, but still Lothlomë stayed in her tree. Aldariel observed wryly to Nímloth that her sister looked like a tree-hugger protesting deforestation near Laketown.

Finally, Thranduil decided his daughter had to come down from her tree. He was half way up before he realised that he'd climbed this tree before, four thousand years earlier, for he could feel the tree's presence as he could every tree he touched. The tree recognised him, and Thranduil thought if trees had faces this one would be smirking. Gritting his teeth, he continued, while Lothlomë saw him coming and climbed up farther, until she poked her head up through the canopy, crying out with delight at the beautiful view of the forest all around her.

Thranduil climbed as far as he knew he safely could, but his wayward daughter was still a few metres above, and refusing to climb down.

Grumbling in a long-forgotten language, Thranduil climbed another metre. Another followed, and then one more. Lothlomë was now almost within reach, though he was not sure that the tree would hold both up so high.

Suddenly, as Thranduil reached for one more branch, the branches beneath his feet and before his grasping hands shifted, and with a cry, the Elvenking fell, trying to grasp a branch to catch himself as he tumbled down.

With no such luck, Thranduil started cursing in another dead language, which soon morphed into Ancient Dwarvish, before reverting to Quenya and finally Silvan.

Through the haze of his rage, pain and embarrassment, Thranduil realised that not only was one of his children still high in the tree, but all the other children present were learning some very interesting words in a variety of languages. He promptly shut up, glaring upwards, while his friends and family laughed their hearts out at his expense.


End file.
